Friday, June 10, 2016

In the world of Special Collections, legends of strange items occasionally drift through the office -- books bound in human skin (no, we don't have one), seal harpoons (yes, we do have one of those!), and other tantalizing snippets. This past week, we rediscovered one of the most Dartmouth-y time capsules ever: a beer can.

During the 1970s, Dartmouth was rapidly changing with women and computers improving campus life. Computer programmers developed Dartmouth's time sharing system, where multiple persons could make use of Dartmouth's computers at the same time. It was completed in the winter of 1977, and the programmers decided to create a lasting time capsule in honor of their creation. They chose a can of Miller beer.

The label on the can reads:

This time capsule was placed in the Kiewit Basement on 26-Feb-1977 to be opend [sic] in 100 years on 26-Feb-2077. The Sysprogs wish you greetings.

The holes

Sysprogs is a common abbreviation for "systems programmers." Each of the programmers on the project signed his or her name on two labels on the other side. Many signed their class years after, showing that many students from the class of 1980 were involved with the project.

In May 2005 (only 28 years in!), we discovered that the archival box was -- horror of horrors -- getting moldy. Our Collections Conservator Deborah Howe suspected a leak from the full can of beer. She drained it via two small holes at the bottom of the can.

Today, you can view the can (and the other items in the box, like a small statue of Paul Revere and a super old-school hard drive), by asking for DA-181, Box 4271.

Tuesday, June 7, 2016

When you think “town records,” you may think of nothing more than mundane city information and tax records. But delving into 19th-century Hanover town records offers quite the surprise. We discovered a deed of indenture, signed by representatives of the town of Hanover, regarding the fate of a 4-year-old girl by the name of Martha Eastman. The town deemed her mother, Josephine, as “not employed in any lawful business” and unable to provide sufficiently for her daughter. During this era, it was not uncommon for the local government to contract the poor into work. Oftentimes, poor adults were provided with room and board, but were required to work off their debts, usually on a poor farm. There were no centralized child services; rather, the town would indenture children, such as Martha, with an individual or family who was willing to take them in.

Martha was “bound out” to be trained as a seamstress and spinster for 14 years (until the age of 18) and to “faithfully serve” Mr. Abraham Perkins, the leader of the Shaker community in Enfield, New Hampshire. According to the arrangement, in exchange for Martha’s servitude, the Shakers were responsible for ensuring Martha’s education and training until the age of 18 when they would provide her with nothing less than “comfortable and decent apparel” – and, we assume, a chance to join the community for life. The Shakers are now mostly known for their furniture, communistic culture, and their belief in celibacy, gender equality, and passivity. For young Martha’s sake, we do hope her upbringing was as wholesome as the Shakers advertised!

Sifting through the other contracts regarding the poor, we found another that involves a boy: Moses Eastman. Moses was another illegitimate child of Josephine, and he was 8 years old at the time he was taken from her to be contracted into service. Unfortunately, he was not sent to Enfield with his sister. Instead, Moses was indentured to Laban Chandler of Hanover, a local farmer, for 13 years (until age 21). We found no additional record of Moses Eastman, besides Chandler’s census information which reported Moses to be Canadian. Also in this census, we know Josephine passed away “as a county pauper” in 1846, the same year that her children were bound out, although there is no apparent record of the cause.

After exhausting several leads on Josephine, her children, and their “masters,” we came to a dead end. Further searching through the Hanover and Enfield records here in Rauner offered no more insight as to where her children grew up, or whom they became. Perhaps in the future, we may stumble upon more clues … for now, all we can do is wonder whatever became of Martha and Moses Eastman?